HOPE SPRINGS: Jersey Shore homes may be beyond repair, like this one in Belmar. Still, many of their owners are digging deep into the holiday spirit this season. Photo: John Crudele

You have to wonder how anyone in Belmar, NJ, a small shore town ravaged by Sandy, could possibly be thankful today.

As in nearby Manasquan and in Midland Beach on Staten Island, just 25 miles up the coastline and around the aptly-named Sandy Hook, miles of homes here were either gutted or rendered uninhabitable.

The guy who owns a $1 million multi-story home just off Belmar’s Lake Como, for instance, says he is very thankful — relative to how he would feel if he owned the house in the picture to the right.

The house in the photo is no more than 50 yards from the ocean. There’s another 100 yards before you get to the home owned by Robert Frungillo, who runs a catering business further inland in Jersey.

Frungillo’s home got six feet of water — but he told me he thinks it could have been worse.

“Yeah, we do, absolutely,” said Frungillo when I asked if he had reason to be thankful. “We’re all safe and that’s most important. This is all brick and mortar. As long as you are safe you can rebuild.”

That’s a response you hear a lot down on The Shore.

The shock of Sandy seems to be wearing off. And while you can’t say that optimism abounds, there is a feeling that things will — one day — return to normal.

Normal, of course, is relative, a word that takes on a dual meaning this time of year. Thanksgiving has always been about relatives, and many in this neighborhood were forced to spend the holiday yesterday at the homes of relatives.

But this year the word “relative” takes on a different meaning in towns like this.

Before people started developing every inch of shoreline in the metropolitan region, there was vacant land along the waterfront. Storms can’t do much damage to vacant land.

It was as if — with Sandy — nature said “OK, I let you use this property. Now, I’m taking it back.”

Frungillo says he has insurance but that many of his neighbors aren’t as lucky. “A lot of people don’t have flood insurance,” he said. That special kind of policy is expensive and “some people just rolled the dice.”

Again, it’s all relative — those neighbors whose houses were only flooded by the ocean’s water and lakes on two sides of Belmar probably feel lucky their house isn’t “red-tagged” — designated to be completely knocked down like many thousand or so homes in Jersey, Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens that will soon be demolished by authorities.

There is, of course, a bigger real estate story that Sandy has written. Even when the Jersey Shore is restored to its former self — from the honky-tonk thrills of Seaside Heights and Point Pleasant to the upscale beauty of places like Deal and Ocean Grove — real estate values aren’t likely to be what they once were.

Any future buyer will have to take into serious consideration the hurricane risk when making an offer. And if environmentalists are right about global warming and the frequency of storms like Sandy property values might never recover.

There doesn’t, of course, need to be ironclad proof that Sandy was a rogue occurrence. Buyers use any excuse they can think of to pay less, and they will do so along the coastline here for decades to come.

Right now, however, people’s thoughts aren’t about future real estate values. They’d like to get their homes and businesses up and running for next summer. But that timetable might be ambitious.

I ran into Tom Rogers, a shop owner, along Ocean Avenue. “This is beautiful now. You should have seen it [before].” Bulldozers were moving sand off the street and trucks were hauling away trash .

One store still had a sign in the window that said “Breakfast Served.” Even if it were being served, there was hardly anyone around to eat.

Rogers said he was grateful that the storm piled four feet of sand in front of his shop’s door and window. The sand drift acted as a barrier against the flood waters.

I also ran into Mark at a café in Manasquan and we discussed the awkwardness of Thanksgiving. “I honestly look forward to it. A moment of normalcy, a step toward recovery and an example of the fact that life goes on,” he said.

To be sure, there are a lot of mixed emotions. A World War II vet I met was proud that he rode out every storm in his home. This time, however, he did have to take shelter on the second floor.

And a woman named Maryann said she had no damage but is suffering from survivor’s guilt because people just a few blocks away from her were wiped out.

Me? I’m a big fan of the Jersey Shore, especially Belmar. That’s where I got to know my wife years ago. I’m grateful that it was there then — and will be again, someday.